



O RATION 



BY THOMAS DTJRFEE, 



July 4th, 1853. 




Glass_EAi4. 



Book. 



\ ( <0 



I'S 



AN 



ORATION 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES 

( AND 

CITIZENS OF PROVIDENCE, 

ON THE 

SEVENTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 

July 4, 1853. 



BY THOMAS DURFEE.I^^U- 



PROVIDENCE: 
KNOWLES, ANTHONY & CO., PRINTERS. 

1853. 



PROVIDENCE, July 15th, 1853. 
Thomas Durfee, Esq: 

Sir : — We have the pleasure to transmit to you the annexed copy of 
a resolution passed by the City Council, on the 11th of July last 
Respectfully, 

Your fellow citizens, 
THO'S A. DOYLE, ^ 

e. w. walker, ( p 

C. W. HOLBROOK, ( Comnnttee. 
GEO. W. HALL, J 



CITY OF PKOVIDENCE. ^ SS^ iTZ's. } 

Resolved, That the committee appointed to make arrangements for 
the Municipal Celebration of the Anniversary of American Lidepen- 
dence, be and they are hereby authorized to request of Thomas Durfee, 
Esq., a copy of the Oration deli:ered by him on the fourth of July last, 
and cause the same to be published in such manner as they may deem 
expedient, for the use of the City Council. 
True copy — Attest: 

ALBERT PABODIE, City Clerk. 



Providence, July 15th, 1853. 

Gentlemen : — I have received yours of this date, transmitting a copy 

of a resolution of the City Council, passed on the 11th of July last. 

Returning to the City Council my thanks for so flattering a proof of 

their approbation, I place my manuscript at your disposal. 

Yours respectfully, 

THOMAS DURFEE. 
To Messrs. THO'S A. DOYLE, -j 
E. W. WALKER, / ^ 
C. W. HOLBROOK, ( Committee. 

GEO. W. HALL, ) 



ORATION. 



Fellow-Citizens : 

We read in English history that shortly after 
the giving of Magna Charta, the high primate of 
the Church, surrounded by his bishops in the pomp 
of pontifical apparel, with censors burning, stood in 
the great hall at Westminster, and, in the pres- 
ence of the king, the peers, and the commons of 
England, did excommunicate and accurse, and from 
the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and from all the 
company of heaven, and from all the sacraments of 
holy church, did sequester and exclude all the vio- 
lators of that glorious ordinance of British freedom. 
The same love of liberty and the same detestation 
of tyranny, which, of old, prompted these ijarrific 
fulminations of the church, are to-day spea^ting in 
the jubilant peal of music and bell and cannon, and 
in all the bright pageantry, the paeans and the bene- 
dictions of a national holiday. It were not un- 
profitable to trace the progress of this Liberty from 
that day, When she stood amongst our ancestors, 
panoplied in curses and anathemas and planting her 
faith on the terrors of an unseen world, down a no- 



6 



ble line of heroes and martyrs, through trying vicis- 
situdes of triumph and disaster, brightening along 
the slow march of centuries, by hard-wrung conces- 
sions from despot and bigot, and by the growing 
light in the masses of the people, until this time, 
when, as the morning blushes from peak to peak, 
and spire calls to spire across the belt of half a hemi- 
sphere, she hears the united thanksgivings of twenty 
millions of free-men rejoicing in her beneficence. 
But the occasion permits only such a passing glance 
along this line of beacon-fires, blazing on the emi- 
nences of the past, as will throw light upon the in- 
stitutions and principles which, whatever their ori- 
gin, drew their fullest inspirations from the Ameri- 
can Eevolution. 

The benefits which we inherit from the Eevolu- 
tion, though incalculably great, may be briefly stated 
thus:— -The secure establishment of a free govern- 
ment ; the example of a disinterested patriotism ; 
the precedent of a wise administrative policy. 

Our fathers established a government avowedly 
deriving its powers from the consent of the govern- 
ed ; and the conformity of this principle with the 
character and habits of the people affords the surest 
pledge of its continuance. This idea of government, 
though it then acquired a new and more perfect ex- 
pression, was not the offspring of the Revolution. 



Dimly foreshadowed or distinctly defined, it has 
always been an element of the Anglo Saxon char- 
acter. The old Roman conqueror remarked it in the 
German forests, when our Teutonic ancestors elected 
their warrior chiefs by the clashing of their shields. 
"With them it migrated to England, breathed its life 
into the British Constitution, and developed itself in 
the contest between prerogative and privilege — the 
divine right of the king and the chartered immu- 
nities of the subject. It is this contest that gives 
an enduring interest to English history. One party 
traced the sources of royal power directly to God 
himself; the other to a constitution which reposed 
on the will of the governed ; — both fought within 
the shadow of a mighty truth. For in one sense 
all government is divine. Man is formed with such 
social attributes that some government is ordained 
in the very laws of his nature, but the kind of gov- 
ernment is of human election not of divine ordi- 
nance. God has said, "Let there be Law," as plain- 
ly as of old He said " Let there be light," and, in 
the infancy of nations, the king stands forth as the 
visible symbol and bright manifestation of this will 
of heaven. It is not strange, then, that in the ru- 
der ages of English history, this distinction between 
the divine and necessary origin of government, and 
the human g,nd elective character of its administra- 



tive functions should have been oftener overlooked 
than recognized. The distinction was rather felt 
than understood ; and the king, inheriting the glo- 
ries of an ancestry vrhose origin was hidden in the 
golden mist of fable, encircled with regal pomp and 
personating the majesty of a mighty nation, with 
vast intellectual and physical resources at his com- 
mand, could easily deceive a simple populace and 
perhaps himself, with the idea that this imperial pow- 
er, which he traced back through the long succession 
of his sceptered lineage, was no other than heaven's 
boon, vouchsafed to him, to be dispensed at his gra- 
cious will, rather than the sacred trust of his people, 
to be administered as they prescribe and for their 
good. Many things favored this idea. He was the 
anointed of the church and swayed the crozier of 
ecclesiastical supremacy. He held the sword, and, 
wherever the English flag floated victoriously over 
the contests of English valor, the triumphant heart 
of the nation bowed to him as the source of their 
martial prowess. By a legal fiction he was immor- 
tal, could do no wrong and was the fountain of jus- 
tice. The honors of the prelacy and the peerage 
were in his gift and he signed the patents for newly- 
discovered climes. From him the oldest nobles of 
the realm held the tenure of their dignities and were 
but too often the minions of his caprice. His 



power, descending in the line of a single family with 
its inherited maxims of self-agrandizement, main- 
tained and enlarged itself with the consistency of a 
single will, while the people resisted with the inde- 
cision of numbers. When Louis the Fourteenth of 
France said, "I am the State," he scarcely wielded 
a single prerogative, which was not claimed by some 
of the English Kings. 

Instinctively the thoughts of the mind seek an 
expression, which shall make them palpable to the 
senses. Now what could have more strikingly em- 
bodied the idea of a divine right of government, 
which, so true as a general law, is false only in ar- 
rogating an exclusive form of organization, than 
this imposing assemblage of sovereign powers '? In 
France such was the result ; in England there was on- 
ly an oscilating tendency towards it. Why was this 1 
The answer lies in the differences of national character. 
The French are a nation of abstractionists and car- 
ry all things to extremes. The English are men of 
practical sense and love the security of moderation. 
The subtle acumen of the French mind delights in 
scientific analysis, which pushes the expression of 
truth to its ultimate formulas. The sturdy com- 
mon sense of the English dwells in the realities of 
practical life and never sacrifices positive good for 
theoretical perfection. Even in their recreations 
2 



10 



you find the same characteristics, impelling the one 
to frivolous gaiety or delirious excitement, satisfying 
the other with a sober comfort. It is owing to this 
difference of character, manifesting itself in politics, 
that the French of one age repose in an absolute 
monarchy, and, in another, hurry to the verge of 
anarchy ; that to-day they expel a constitutional 
monarch to indulge the Utopian dream of a perfect 
political equality, and to-morrow bask their fickle 
hearts in the meritricious splendor of a despotism. 
England, on the other hand, clings even to old abu- 
ses, out of respect to some contingently resulting 
benefit, and revives antiquated precedents, which 
can only plead their by-gone services as a palliation 
for present mischief She moves forward holding 
always by the past, exhibiting the completest ex- 
ample extant of a progressive conservatism. Her 
history is the history of common sense applied to 
politics. 

This original practical tendency of the English, 
now reposing on its sturdy tenacity and now incited 
to action by English liberty, was still further devel- 
oped by their political training. From early times 
they claimed, exemption from taxes unless levied by 
their own representatives ; the right of trial by a 
jury of their peers ; protection, under the writ of 
habeas corpus, from arrest and imprisonment except 



11 



for causes known to the law ; and the right of im- 
peaching the powerful ministers of the crown, be- 
fore the House of Lords, for high crimes and mis- 
demeanors. These privileges gave them the cen- 
sorship of the royal expenditures, power to prevent 
the acquisition of the means of oppression and to 
exact the redress of grievances ; secured their lives, 
liberty and propertv from infringement and restrain- 
ed the exorbitance of official power within its 
legitimate sphere. The possession of freedom is it- 
self one source of the virtues by which it is perpet- 
uated. Waging the contest with the royal prerog- 
ative from the vantage ground of these chartered 
rights, English liberty repaid the debt, which she 
ow^ed to the practical mind and moral character of 
the people, by the new enlargement which she im- 
parted to that mind and that character. She in- 
spired the greatest deeds in English history and 
glowed in the grandest conceptions of English litera- 
ture. From sire to son, by the hearth-side of the 
English yeoman, descended the traditions which 
told how their fathers kindled with patriotic resent- 
ment, when the king's bailiff presented his warrant 
for illegal taxes, w^hen their brethren were impris- 
oned without precept, condemned without the judg- 
ment of their peers, restricted of the free right of 
speech or invaded in the sanctuary of their homes. 



12 



And thus did liberty grow into the habit of their 
life ; she was no brilliant apparition, that emerged 
and vanished in the smoke of civil contests ; her ap- 
peal was made to the sanctity of law, to time-honor- 
ed customs, to immunities older than tradition, to 
institutions sacred by glorious memories, to prece- 
dents with the force of statutes and to reason stron- 
ger than precedent, and to the eternal rules of jus- 
tice, so that every victory for freedom was no less a 
victory in the moral development of the nation. — 
Once only does she imbrue her hand in royal 
blood, and then, only after the forfeiture of repeated 
pledges given for her security. iVt no time do you 
find her clamoring for abstract principles. She sheds 
no blood for the empty phantoms of liberty, equali- 
ty, fraternity. That is a French frenzy. But when 
one of the institutions, through which a principle is 
bodied into practical life, is perilled either by vio- 
lence or treachery, then you hear the sentry note of 
alarm sounded by the free press of England; you hear 
the oracles of the law uttered by the courts, within 
whose precincts liberty sits enshrined by the side of 
j ustice ; while the indignant voice of parliament blends 
with the public clamor to swell the volume of irre- 
pressible denunciation, and if this does not prevail^ 
there is still left the final and triumphant appeal to 
the irresistable remonstrance of theBritish bayonet. 



13 



But why do I dwell upon the manifestations of 
this spirit in English history ? Because the in- 
heritor of a noble patrimony feels safer in its pos- 
session from having traced the unblemished chain 
of title, by which it has descended. AVe too are 
the heirs of English glory and English liberty. For 
us too did she endure this discipline of centuries of 
trial ; for many generations, her history is our his- 
tory ; her blood warms our hearts and her experi- 
ence has moulded our character ; that character has 
qualified us for the achievement of self-government, 
and therefore, in celebrating our independence from 
her, it is not unmeet we do it with generous ac- 
knowledgments, as the enfranchised son, while re- 
gretting the faults, piously remembers the bene- 
factions of his parent. 

The liberty and the character, which we inherited 
from the mother country, and which are so indisso- 
lubly wedded in English history, received a new ex- 
pansion in the American Revolution. American 
colonization was itself one movement of the free 
spirit of the age. The colonists of New England 
were the Puritans, than whom no sincerer lovers of 
freedom ever breathed the English air. They had 
disclaimed the authority of the English hierarchy, 
and in the same bold spirit, with which they ap- 
pealed from the church to the Bible, they appealed 



u 



from the king to the constitution. To statesmen of 
their school, England owes it that she was not de- 
moralized and enslaved by the corrupt and despotic 
dynasty of the Stuarts. Flying persecutions at home, 
they sought freedom in the western forests. Other 
adventurous spirits settled other parts of the new 
world. They came under royal charters, which, sub- 
ject to the jurisdiction therein reserved to the king 
and council, secured to them their heritage of Eng- 
lish rights and English laws. By virtue of these, 
Parliament had no power to tax them and no direct 
authority in their internal administration. Their 
contributions were levied by themselves, in response 
to circular letters addressed by the king to their pro- 
vincial assemblies. Under their charters they had 
established these. Many of them chose their own 
governors. Their division into thirteen separate 
colonies had brought more directly home to each 
citizen the responsibilities of government and trained 
him in its rights and duties. Eor this reason 
they had more practical knowledge, and more 
thoroughly understood the theory and history of 
politics than men of the same class in England. 
Yet in all this they were Englishmen with English 
ideas, tracin^: their rij^hts to Majrua Charta, and 
basing their reasonings on the principles of the 
revolution of 1688. 



15 



The immunities of such a people the king and 
parliament attempted to violate. We will not speak 
uncharitably of England. The problem of colonial 
administration was perplexing at the best, and the 
intervention of three thousand miles and an ocean 
could hardly have simplified its intricacies; yet jus- 
tice requires that we should condemn her policy. 
It was selfish, illiberal, short-sighted — aiming sim- 
ply to make America a source of profit. Her trade 
should swell the gains of English commerce ; her 
wants supply the market for English manufactures ; 
the younger sons of the nobility and the favorites 
and sycophants of the crown should be pensioned 
on her civil and military ofiices. The long cata- 
logue of grievances, to which this policy led, is writ- 
ten in the Declaration of Independence. Prominent 
among them is taxation by parliament. So long as 
America retained the right to grant or refuse her 
contributions, some emergency might arise, when 
she could extort the redress of her grievances ; if 
this right Avere lost, then was she doomed to irre- 
trievable oppression. The old issue was raised, 
whether a free-born Briton could be taxed by any 
other than his representatives, so often of old deci- 
ded in favor of freedom ; and she felt, she should 
be recreant not only.to herself and to posterity, but 
to immortal memories, if now it were decided other- 



16 



wise. Dissolving, therefore, the ties of a forfeited 
allegiance, and declaring, that " governments are in- 
stituted amongst men deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed," — she appealed 
no less to English history than to the inherent rights 
of man for her justification, and did not fail to find 
champions even at the foot of the throne. The 
events of the revolution are too familiar to need re- 
pitition here. The result of the contest was the 
independence of America and the establishment of 
a government, which, preserving all that was most 
valuable in the English constitution and laws, abol- 
ished every vestige of hereditary power, and planted 
itself on the principle of political equality. 

In this wise, did the imperfect germ of self-gov- 
ernment, transplanted from the German forests into 
the genial soil of the English character, deriving 
thence the elastic vigor to resist the long continued 
aggressions of a throne, which rested on the posses- 
sion of physical power and the arrogation of divine 
right, and gathering strength from resistance, ex- 
pand, through the Revolution, to its crowning matu- 
rity in the American Constitution. And, therefore, 
do I claim for it a secure establishment, because it 
hath come in the progress of a natural development, 
as the product not of evanescent causes but of the 
indigenous elements of our national character. 



n 



Fellow Citizens ! I will speak briefly of the spirit 
in which our ancestors achieved this great result, — 
of their example of disinterested patriotism. 

Few now are left of those who once survived the 
revolution. Here and there you meet some vene- 
rable man, marked with honorable scars and wrin- 
kled with unremembered troubles, bowed beneath 
the burthen of many infirmities, whose thin locks 
are bleached by the frosts of ninety winters, whose 
listless eye has long since grown dim with sorrowful 
experience, within whose heart the chords of many 
a cherished and many a bitter feeling will never 
as-ain vibrate to the touch of human sympathy. The 
important intelligence of the day, the great discove- 
ries in science and art, the improvements that 
enhance knowledge and multiply enjoyment, reach 
him without interest, and the most touching events 
of his household scarcely ruffle the torpor of his fa- 
culties. Yet there is thrilling life in that form. 
Touch upon some event, whisper but the name of 
some hero of the revolution — the faded eye kindles, 
the wan and furrowed face glows with animation, 
new vigor erects that bent and tottering frame, the 
eloquence of forgotten tones lingers on those lips, 
and the intelligence of a better day lights up his 
intellect. His soul still pants with the valor of 
3 



18 



Bunker Hill and Monmouth and Lexington — still 
burns with its ancient devotion to Lafayette and 
Greene and Washington. "What is the spring of 
this quenchless enthusiasm, defying time and sor- 
row and surviving almost the recollection of his 
wedded life, — the one living spot unblemished by 
decay 1 The inspirations of an heroic passion have 
once elevated him above his ordinary humanity. 
His heart, once pledged to the service of a great 
principle, to the defence of sacred rights — kept its 
fidelity in the face of hardship and sacrifice 
and danger and death, and the sense of noble duties 
nobly discharged rewards the hero with undying 
memories of a time, when the love of self was all 
absorbed and glorified in the love of country. 

If any one should measure this greatness of soul, 
this enthusiasm of self devotion, simply by the bat- 
tles of the revolution, he would very imperfectly 
conceive its character. Greater battles have been 
fought to serve the crazy whims of a tyrant. But 
no tyrant ever accomplished what America achieved. 
His army is formed from compacted forces inured 
to submission, — hers from the dissentient passions 
of a rebellion. The reduction of many minds to 
single-hearted obedience is easy under the pressure 
and discipline of established power ; she must efiect 
it by the force of a great sentiment, which, seizing 



19 



the free wills of the community, bends them to a 
common object. Thirteen different states must for- 
get their differences in a federation of their coun- 
cils ; thousands of men, too rich to suffer from the 
grievance of taxation or too poor to be reached by 
its exactions, must lay aside their private interests 
in devotion to the public. It is done. Otis and 
Adams and Franklin and Henry and Jefferson smite 
the chords of patriotism with the memory of tra- 
ditional right and the prophecy of predestinated 
freedom, until that divine instinct of the soul, which 
makes it sweeter to die in the service of truth than 
to enjoy the richest rewards of its renunciation, 
quickens the conscience of a nation. It is a moral, 
not a martial greatness, that gives its glory to the 
revolution. The lofty temper, with which they en- 
tered on the war against desperate odds, after seven 
years of exposure to the direst sufferings — cold, hun- 
ger, poverty, sickness, captivity and death — after 
hope was blighted and the scant rewards of their 
service had dwindled in the depreciation of a fac- 
titious currency, still preserved its original force 
unspent. In the hour of appalling darkness which 
no human sagacity could penetrate, they moved on- 
wards with serene confidence in the benignity of 
Providence, and, thus supporting their patriotism 
on the arm of religion, devoted themselves unshrink- 



20 



ingly to death. Not inaptly of them may be said 
what was said of the old Athenians slain in battle ; 
"Bestowing thus their lives on the public, they 
have every one received a praise that will never de- 
cay, a sepulchre that will always be most illustri- 
ous — not that in which their bones lie mouldering, 
but that in which their fame is preserved — to be on 
every occasion, when honor is the employ of either 
word or act, eternally remembered." 

But there is another element of the spirit of that 
time, which must not be forgotten. The patriotism, 
that sits with clasped hands beside the altars of 
home, in its unwitnessed endurance is scarcely less 
heroic than that, which with undaunted courage 
mingles in the storm of battle. The mind touched 
by the honorable ambitions of civic life, the heart 
that garners up the treasure of household affections 
or enshrines the mystery of earliest love, goes forth 
shielded by many prayers and returns smitten by 
that undistinguishing hand, leaving to others the 
wounds which no human art can heal. Yet the 
charities, that shed their charm by the fireside, not 
only intertwine but foster the virtues, which con- 
stitute the ornament and strength of states. The 
widowed mother, already once despoiled, buckles 
his father's equipments around her son, inflames 
with noble words his quick sense of glory and valor, 



21 



faltering now not with fear but tenderness, and, 
with the parting benedictions of love and religion, 
devotes him to her country's service. In the fa- 
tigues of the march, in the privations of the camp, 
in the perils of battle, in the vision of inevitable 
death, that remembered form still cheers, still en- 
courages, still points forward to the post of honor, 
and upward, through the assurances of faith, to the 
recompence of duty. Beside his humble grave, hon- 
ored with no public sorrow and marked by no memo- 
rial inscription, stands the solitary mourner, and, 
from that simple mound where every earthly joy lies 
buried with her son, lifts upward a thankful heart, 
because he still reposes in the soil of freedom. For- 
ever honored be this finer and less appreciable, but 
scarcely less potent, influence of the Women of the 
E evolution ! 

If the strictness of truth require the qualifying 
touch of a darker pencil, it may be trusted to the 
scrupulous exactness of the historian. Better for 
us is it, that we take home to our hearts these 
brighter patterns for study and imitation, remember- 
ing that, though not summoned to the glory of dying 
for our country, a no less pure and honorable fame 
awaits the man who lives for its improvement. * 



* This and the preceding paragraph, on account of the lateness of the Iioiir, 
were omitted in the delivery. 



Jivj 



22 



The men, wlio established our government upon 
the permanent basis of the federal constitution, like- 
wise moulded its earliest administrative policy. At 
the head of the administration were Washington 
and Adams ; in the cabinet were Jefferson, Hamil- 
ton, Knox and Eandolph, all distinguished for their 
revolutionary services. Arduous duties devolved 
upon them — to discharge a heavy public debt, to 
devise a system of national finances, to revive a lan- 
guishing commerce, to encourage manufactures and 
the mechanic arts, to allay the jealousies and har- 
monize the interests of thirteen states. A foreign 
policy was to be adopted, a matter embarrased in 
the outset by the attempt of foreign emissaries and 
many of our own citizens to involve the country in 
the contests of the French Eevolution. The ques- 
tion of international intervention, which has so late- 
ly agitated the public mind, was then presented, and 
it was determined, that while the government would 
entertain every proposed alliance of amity and com- 
merce, it would observe a strict neutrality in the 
political concerns of other nations. Who shall say 
how much depended on the wisdom of these initia- 
tory measures; or what slight variations from their 
line of policy might have disturbed the delicate bal- 
ance of adjustments, which sustains so many sepa- 



23 

rate sovereignties in obedience to one central law, 
have retarded the material prosperity of the country 
or committed it to a series of pernicious entangle- 
ments with foreign polities'? The views which 
guided that administration, are bequeathed to us 
in Washington's Farewell Address. The fundamen- 
tal principle of its policy was to confine American 
energies to the improvement of American resources — 
in one word, self-development. Under the guid- 
ance of this principle, occasionally modified in its 
application by the emergence of new interests or 
the change of parties, the country has achieved its 
unexampled progress of material and political pros- 
perity. May never the madness of partizan passion, 
the lust of territorial conquest or the eloquent cas- 
uistry of a misguided philanthropy seduce her from 
a policy so pregnant with beneficent results ! 

This liberty, thus acquired and thus extended 
through the constitution and laws to all the con- 
cerns of civil life, and this common country, thus 
auspiciously inaugurated in its career of improve- 
ment, have descended to us for enjoyment and trans- 
mission. We are one link of that society, which, 
renewing itself from generation to generation, per- 
petuates not only the succession of human life but 
the civilization of the race. The individual perish- 
es — she is immortal, and, in her archives records 



24 



the title, and keeps for herself the fee fo this fair 
inheritance of government and law and liberty, of 
science and art and literature, and the garnered har- 
vests of industry and genius — from all her ample 
possessions, allowing to man simply usufruct. On 
him she bestows, without price, the use of all her 
gifts — the boon of civil liberty, purchased of yore 
with such precious blood. Has he then no duty 
but their enjoyment '? Let him not be deceived! 
Let him not, misintrepreting the praises of liberty 
by the wise and the good, too hastily infer that she 
comes to bring the palms of manly excellence, rath- 
er than to open the lists in which they may be won. 
Let him never forget those darker days of France, 
when the votaries of freedom, exulting in the 
apotheosis of human reason, defied the sanctions of 
morality and religion and placed 

" Within tlie sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations ; " 

and, from this fearful warning, let him learn in time, 
that she brings no exemptions from human en- 
deavor and only multiplies the obligations of 
duty. The civil franchises and the political rights 
which she confers, valuable as they are, are chiefly 
valuable because they insure the inviolabilty of the 
reason and the conscience, — of that nobler liberty 
wherewith the truth doth make us free. This liber- 



25 

ty, the bnghtest flower of an exalted manhood, no hu- 
man law can confer. This the individual must 
achieve for himself Yet it is the element from 
which spring the fruits of the purest virtue, the pro- 
ducts of the noblest genius, the enduring excellen- 
cies of literature and philosophy and art. If these 
have flourished under the sway of tyrants, it is only 
because, even in the absence of civil rights, the 
mind has dared to cherish its own proper freedom. 
For this reason, Socrates in prison and Grotius in 
exile, disdaining to purchase the favor of people or 
king by the smallest concessions of this birthright 
of the soul, stand at the summit of moral heroism. 
For the same reason, what scale can graduate the 
pusillanimity of that free born citizen, who, blessed 
with every civil immunity, yet surrenders, from 
mere cowardice of thought, his private judgment to 
the shifting currents of popular opinion or the impe- 
rious despotism of ancient abuse, or still more, basely 
barters it for a price. Heaven forbid, that any 
American should ever fathom the depth of such a 
degradation ! And yet ' the spirit of our fathers, 
speaking from the annals of their time, doth chal- 
lenge from us a higher elevation of intellectual and 
social freedom than we have yet attained ; doth de- 
mand from us that we shall be less the plagiarists 
of European manners and less the copyists of Euro- 
4 



26 



pean thought; that we shall more willingly 
foresro the idolatrous service of wealth in the culture 
of the higher faculties of our nature, and that, keeping 
inviolate the union between freedom of thought and 
freedom of speech, we in our turn shall infuse some- 
what of that grand and liberal spirit, in which they 
fashioned the fabric of our government, into the 
lofty creations of genius and reason — into the beau- 
tiful forms of poetry and art. And on this day, when 
we are all so pardonably profuse in our ascriptions 
of self-applause, may we not also hear those ances- 
tral voices, breathing through exultant congrega- 
tions, like the wind-woven music of a forest, with 
the impressive announcement, that the glory of a 
nation lies not in its opulence, not in its material 
power, scarcely in the freedom of its laws, but in 
the intelligence, the virtue, the magnanimity — the 
intellectual and moral pre-eminence of its citizens. 
But what, it may be asked, amid this unbounded 
freedom of thought and this unrestrained licence of 
expression, shall insure the stability of Government ? 
Nothing, but a continuance of the national virtues 
in which it was established, and, chief amongst them, 
a profound sense in the popular mind, of the obli- 
gations of the law. Between the wide extremes of 
social rank and along the extended gradations of 
pecuniary inequality, lurk the abundant motives for 



27 



sedition and the powerful temptations to rapacity ; 
yet affluence may revel in her palace while poverty 
starves air its threshhold, and luxury may slumber 
by the thoroughfare where wretchedness stalks un- 
sheltered, and the reverential conviction of the pres- 
ence of a law, that wakes and protects and punishes, 
stall appal the heart of the conspirator and stay 
the hand of the robber. ■ It is on this sentiment that 
repose the solid foundations of our Republic. Let 
no well-wisher of freedom dare to tamper with it ! 
Rather let every citizen cherish it in himself and his 
children, not as a blind instinct of fear, but as an 
enlightened persuasion of the reason, remembering 
that it is interlinked with the tenure of all his 
rights, and that in disobeying it he is disloyal to 
himself and repudiates his own humanity, rendering 
thus the most fearful expiation, even though no oth- 
er punishment overtake his guilt.* An English 
author has sneeringly described our government as 
"an anarchy, regulated by the street-constable." Let 
us accept his taunt as our glory ; for the full majes- 
ty of the law doth walk abroad in the humblest 
functionary that executes its precepts, and the mo- 
ment it becomes less venerable in his person than in 
the proudest monarch on his throne, that moment 



* For a beautiful passage upon the obligations of law, see Cicero, De Ke- 
pub. Lilj. ni, Cap. 22, quoted by Sir James Maekintosli in his " Discourse on 
the Law of Nature and Nations." 



28 



our government shakes to its centre and we do in- 
deed beeome an anarchy, not regulated, but at the 
mercy of the passions and caprices of all sorts and 
conditions of men. 

Next to a respect for the law, if it be not implied 
in it, the surest bulwark of our institutions is a ven- 
eration for the Union. A fabric, whose strong foun- 
dations were laid by Washington and his great com- 
peers, as the grand experiment of the age, and which 
has thus far so abundantly redeemed the auguries of 
its institution in the unparalleled prosperity which it 
has confered, which, with an expansiveness almost mi- 
raculous, advances the broad shield of the Consti- 
tution over the constantly emergent destinies of 
new-born States, and which, in its extension, has re- 
flected the meridian splendor and still glows with 
the setting glories of a Clay and a Webster, needs 
scarcely plead its transcendant utility to insure its 
duration. No, fellow-citizens ! I will not insult 
your understandings and your hearts by the conjec- 
ture of its dismemberment. No ! — it stands too se- 
curely established in the history of its unnumbered 
blessings — too intimately interwoven in the amalga- 
mation of its diversified interests, ever to be abol- 
ished ; No ! — bearing proudly up the constellated 
banner of the nation, it remains, and will remain 
forever, firmly clasped and cemented together in the 



29 



fusion of the ties that make us one people, with one 
language and one blood, one system of laws and one 
form of government, a common history and d com- 
mon tradition, the same shrines of religion, the same 
monuments of national glory and the same ancestral 
graves. 



THE FOLLOWING WAS THE 



VOLUNTARY ON THE OEGAN. 



INTRODUCTORY ANTHEM— by the Juvenile Choir. 

WORDS BY GEO. P. MOREIS. 

Freedom spreads her downy wings, 
Over all created things ; 
Glory to the King of kings. 

Bend low to him the knee ! 
Bring the heart before His throne — 
Worship Him and Him alone!— 
He 's the only King we o\vn — 

And He has made us free ! 

The holiest spot a smiling sun 
E'er shed its genial rays upon, 
Is that which gave a Washington, 

The drooping woi'ld to cheer ! 
Sound the clarion-peals of fame ! 
Yc who bear Columbia's name ! — 
With existence freedom came^ 

It is man's birth-right here ! 

Heh-s of an immortal sire. 

Let his deeds your hearts inspire ; 

Weave the strain and wake the lyre 

Where your proud altars stand! 
Hail with pride and loud hurrahs. 
Streaming from a thousand spars. 
Freedom's rainbow-flag of stars ! 
The symbol of our land. 



PRAYER— BY Rev. J. C. Stockbridge. 

MUSIC — BY THE American Brass Band. 

Reading of the Declaration of Independence. 

BY WILLIAM M. RODMAN, ESQ. 

MUSIC— BY West's Cornet Bank. 



fy-tit. 



SONG — BY THE Juvenile Choir. 

AVORDS BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY. 

Clime ! beneath whose genial sun 
Kings were quell'd and freedom won ; 
Where the dust of Washington 

Sleeps in glory's bed, — 
Heroes from thy sylvan shade 
Chang'd the plough for battle-blade, — 
Holy men for thee have pray'd, — 

Patriot martyrs bled. 

Crownless Judah mourns in gloom — 
Greece lies slumb'ring in the tomb-^ 
Rome hath shorn her eagle plume — 

Lost her conquering name, — 
Youthful Nation of the West, 
Else ! with truer greatness blest. 
Sainted bands from realms of rest, 

Watch thy bright'ning fame. 

Empire of the brave and free ! 
Stretch thj' sway from sea to sea,-^ 
Who shall bid thee bend the Ivnee 

To a tyrant's throne ? 
Knowledge is thine armor bright, 
Liberty thy beacon light, 
God himself thy shield of might, 

Bow to him alone. 



o n. -<aL. T I o 3»" , 

BY THOMAS DURFEE, ESQ. 

MUSIC — BY THE American Brass Band. 
SONG — BY THE Juvenile Choir. 

THS: FtAG OF OUB UNION. 

WORDS BY GEO. P. MORRIS, ESQ. 

" A song for our banner? " The watchword recall 

Which gave the Republic her station ; 
"United we stand, divided we fall! " 

It made and preserves us a nation ! 
The union of lakes — the union of lands — 

The imion of States none can sevei' — 
The union of hearts — the union of hands — 

And the Flag of our Union forever! 

What God in his infinite wisdom designed. 
And armed with his weapons of thunder. 

Not all the earth's despots and factions combined. 
Have the power to conquer or sunder! 

The union of lakes, &c. 

BENEDICTION— BY thk Rev. J. C. Stockbridge. 



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